


you and me, we're beautiful

by Mx_Carter



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Fluff, Gem Psychology, Homeworld Culture, Opal is the central fusion, Worldbuilding, and Ruby and Sapphire are unfused, the gems are pretty much the best mums you could wish for in any universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 19:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7002040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mx_Carter/pseuds/Mx_Carter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Amethyst, are you alright? Oh, I was so worried!"<br/>"I’m fine, ya dufus. Ya know me, I bounce. What about you, did they hurt you?"<br/>"No, I’m alright. But you're sure-"<br/>"P! I’m fine, I promise, quit worrying."<br/>"I know, it's just...I missed you."<br/>"Weeeell, I suppose I might have missed you too, ya know, a bit."<br/>"Oh, Amethyst."</p><p>Or, Pearl and Amethyst meet in Rose's war camp, and learn to love each other. This is what happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Gotta be honest with you guys, this may never be added to. I just wanted to get it out of my drafts and share it, because I quite like what I've done so far. I hope you do too.
> 
> Some quick notes to help you visualise - Ruby and Sapphire are slightly taller than in canon, and Opal is a lot shorter, although she still has four arms. Also, I headcanon Sapphire as being blind and relying on her future vision and a form of psychic 'radar sense'. 
> 
> Title from Afterlife by Ingrid Michaelson

When Sapphire has managed to calm Greg down - stars know someone has to, and Ruby and Opal aren't always the most reassuring people - and everyone is back at the temple, Opal barely manages to get Steven into his bed before he falls unconscious. It was always the most probable outcome - after all, it's been a long day - but Sapphire can't help but focus on Steven's sleeping form with a certain careful fondness tonight. She has not stood guard as her charge sleeps for months now, at Opal's insistence, but she may have to break her streak tonight.

 Ruby is watching Steven too, still in the way she so rarely is. She was scared, then. Sapphire knows of old that Ruby will not admit weakness until she absolutely has to, but she also knows that Ruby loves Steven with the fiery, staggering passion she brings to everything, and that him being in danger must have been terrifying for her. She’s been practically bouncing off the walls of her cell before Steven had managed to rescue them.

 Her brave boy. She is so proud of him.

 Opal is down by the beach still, and she is moving debris, already beginning the clean-up. Their comrade was never one to rest on her laurels for long - a blend of Pearl's methodical neatness and Amethyst's impatience, she'd once though, until Rose had taken her aside and explained that Opal was more than the sum of Pearl and Amethyst. She had known this, of course, but Homeworld’s lessons are hard to unlearn sometimes. Easier for Ruby, who was just a foot soldier, nothing more than cannon fodder, and for Opal, who by nature rejects all of home world’s teachings. Sapphire had been an aristocrat. She had been a true part of the system, and it had certainly left a mark. 

 She doesn't often think about her life on Homeworld. It is the gem ship's fault - submerging herself in their systems had brought back memories, not to mention the jasper's presence. At some point, she is going to have to sort through this new information and figure out how best to use it, and what it will all mean for her family. 

 But for now, it's not urgent, and she is tired. She will content herself with checking that the people she loves are as well as they can be, and begin work on a strategy come morning.

 Steven is first, most fragile and most urgent, so she reaches out to him first, letting her mind fall over him. Apart from a hot, puffy bruise around his eye which his sweat will have healed by morning - she has not told him that all of his bodily fluid can heal, because he will learn in time anyway - and some psychological damage which they will deal with when he wakes, he is acceptably close to alright. His dreams are restless and frightened as his mind tries to process what has happened to him, but a little nudge sends them off to better places. There is a rabbit and a frog. Sometimes, Sapphire does not understand Steven.

 Ruby she checks on next, but the other gem senses her, as she always does, and heats up slightly in irritation. "You could just ask, you know? You don't have to go prying in my head." 

 "I’m not prying," Sapphire points out, but she takes no offence. Ruby has had a stressful day, and she has always resented what she views as Sapphire's intrusions. She must make allowances. "Are you alright?"

 "Fine. Totally okay, bar really wanting to punch Jasper in the gem. Still, watching her get dragged into the ocean was great stress relief." Ruby is telling the truth, although she has left out the exhaustion. She lets her be, stands, and floats down to the ground floor.

 "Going to check on Opal?" Ruby asks after her. She nods an affirmative, and feels Ruby's relief. She had been worried, but hadn't known how to breach the subject. Ruby mostly avoids conversations about emotion.

 What a group they are. To borrow a human term, all three - four - three of them are completely FUBAR.

 She leaves the temple, and goes off to check on Opal.


	2. Chapter 2

When the sun comes up, Opal puts down the debris she was moving, walks over to the shore, sits down and tilts her head upwards to the sky. She loves sunrises on earth; the feeling of beginning, the return of light after the darkness, the raspberry pinks and lavender purples and occasionally the brilliant golds. Sunrise is her favourite time of day by far, and she always makes sure she's around to see it.

Gems don’t need to breathe but she’s gotten into the habit, and the air where she’s sitting is clean and salty. In the Gem ship, there had been no smell in the air at all, and the void of it had been unbearable. She – they – had got used to smelling _something_ in the air, had grown to enjoy the different scents. She had grown to enjoy all of the wonderful excesses of humanity, had gratefully forgotten Pearl’s memories of Homeworld.

On Homeworld, everything is functional. Opal is the antithesis of functional, and she loves that about herself even more right now. She doesn’t want to be anything like _them._

They’d been so _scared_ in the ship, so _alone._ Pearl and Amethyst only unfused when absolutely necessary, and they’d forgotten what it was like to be separate entities. They’d both hated it.

It’s probably a little narcissistic, but Opal isn’t afraid to say that she’s better as herself than Pearl or Amethyst are on their own. After Steven had been born, they’d split up for a while, and considered staying that way for good, at least till Steven was older. Eventually, Ruby and Sapphire had sat them down and pointed out that Opal was far better at childcare and handling the fact that Rose was…gone…than Pearl and Amethyst were. Together, they’re stable, they complement each other. They _match._

Opal is peace, is completeness. Opal is an afternoon nap, hot chocolate on a day not cold enough to necessitate it, running for nothing more than the rush of movement and power. Opal hasn’t been a battle fusion for millennia – she fights, and is good at it, but she doesn’t exist to fight.

Opal is love; she is made to love, and she is made of love. And she has – they have – no plans of ever splitting up, especially not simply because some jasper thinks she’s an abomination or something. Honestly, she thinks viciously, that just makes it better.

Pearl and Amethyst will always be stronger together.


	3. Chapter 3

Opal honestly doesn't know when she became the unofficial relationship counsellor of Beach City. She's also not really sure what to think about it.

Rose had been the one to start it, coming to her with stories of the fascinating humans she's met, and how much she wanted to get closer to them. Yes, it had hurt, the idea that Rose was choosing human companionship over them, but long gone are the days when either of Opal's parts wanted anything more than friendship from Rose. So she had pushed down the sourness in her gut and tried to help Rose.

Over time, her advice had gotten better.

Greg had not been Rose's first serious human, but he had been the first to interact with the gems. Sapphire had been inexplicably furious at his presence at first, and had never warmed up to him, despite Rose's pleading. (Later, Opal will look back on this and feel a wave of sadness of Sapphire, and the silent burden she must have carried during the courtship. How she restrained herself from driving him away for good, Opal will never understand. She certainly couldn't have done it.) Ruby tolerated him at first, before eventually befriending him. She'd treated him a bit like a pet, but she'd still been quite close to him.

At the time, Opal had had no strong feelings towards Greg, except relief that he made Rose happy. So when he'd cornered her after Sapphire's latest attempt to scare him off and asked about fusion, she'd been completely nonplussed.

She'd known it wouldn't work - gems and humans could not fuse, humans just weren't made for it - but she'd told him how to try.

It had ended up saving the relationship, and making them so much closer than any human had ever got to Rose.

(Later, Opal will look back on this, and guiltily wish she'd told him it was impossible and left it that.)

Throughout the relationship, the two of them come to her for advice, and she does her best. She thinks it helps.

(Rose doesn't go to her first about her decision to be pregnant. She goes to Sapphire, and Opal can't help but be a little jealous. Mostly, she's just so relieved.)

After Rose...goes..., Greg knows better than to ask her advice about grieving. Amethyst and Pearl would probably have killed him on sight, and frankly even Opal would have been hard-pressed not to let her meaner side out a little.  Relations with Greg have only gotten better since then, especially once they all inevitably fell head over heels for little Steven, but he's never come to her for advice again.

Everyone else, on the other hand...

She's never loved humans like Rose does, but she enjoys their company just as much. They're nothing like gems, so much simpler and more emotional, but somehow so much more complex and real. They fascinate her, but not like they did Rose. Rose loved humans in the abstract, loved the idea of them - until Greg, at least. Opal actually gets to know them, makes friends.

Vidalia is one example. They met each other through Ruby, and took to each other pretty quickly. She's also one of the few humans to know that Opal is a fusion, and what that actually means for her. So when she came looking for her the first time Ruby kissed her, Opal really wasn't surprised.

She'd known it wouldn't last, but had tried to be encouraging. They'd had a long talk about romance in gem culture - i.e. unacceptable and disgusting - about romance in the Crystal Gems, and about Ruby. The whole thing had been pretty interesting, and while the resulting relationship had only lasted a few years, Ruby and Vidalia had remained close friends. Honestly, Opal's quite proud of herself.

Vidalia had come to talk to her about her marriage to Yellowtail on several occasions, and had apparently told everyone that Opal was a relationship counsellor or something, because people kept coming. She's lost count of the humans she's counselled through break-ups, make-ups, crushes, first dates and the general ups and downs of human romantic life. Just a few months ago, three of Steven's friends - Vidalia's oldest, the Mayor's son and one of the Pizza girls - had sought her out separately to ask about polyamory. She'd ended up tricking them into coming to see her at the same time, and leaving them to it. Humans can be quite easy to manage, once you get the hang of it.

Once, she'd cornered Greg and asked him why humans kept seeking her out like this. He'd looked at her like he was honestly surprised she'd needed to ask.

"Opal, you're pretty much the physical embodiment of the perfect relationship. You must be doing something right."

That throws her for a loop all day, because...she isn't. Pearl and Amethyst might be close and loving, but they're far from perfect. About once every two centuries, some minor dispute will escalate and cause her to unfuse. The arguments are legendary. So it's not like she's in a state of perpetual happiness or something.

Which, now she thinks about it, just might be the point.

Amethyst and Pearl disagree, fight, even outright brawl if they get angry enough. But once the dust is settled and the air is clear, they always find a way to make up. No matter how bad the fights get - and they have gotten really, terribly bad - they will always find a way around their differences and try again.

Maybe that's why they've lasted so long. Because they talk it out, because they're still so passionate about everything, because they _try_. Because no matter how bad it gets, they don't give up on each other.

That's love, then. It must be. She thinks she understands a bit better now.

Her next bit of advice is going to be _excellent._


End file.
